


What doesn't kill you

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She hates that they’re even talking about this. She hates that Eames has seen her stabbed, shot and disemboweled, but this is still an issue, still something to be addressed.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	What doesn't kill you

**Author's Note:**

> Double genderswap. Written for [this prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/15916.html?thread=32779564#t32779564) on the kink meme.

Arthur doesn’t regret giving herself up to the mark’s projections to buy time for her extractor to finish the job, but she does wish it hadn’t been necessary.

The most pressing reason currently is that she’s surrounded by five projections, including the one holding the gun to her head and standing watch over her where she’s bound with zip-cord to a metal chair, and none of them have hit her yet. They’re just watching her, feral and hungry. Or they had been, up until the one directly in front of her takes a step forward and slowly pulls down his zipper.

She’s avoided situations like this thus far, fuck knows how, both in dreams and up above, but she’s always known there’s a chance it might come to this and that she won’t have a way out. She clenches her hands behind her, staving off panic and a sick, helpless feeling of vulnerability by cultivating anger in its place, bright and flint-strike hard.

She bares her teeth at the guy rubbing his dick through his briefs – _come and try to get it, asshole_ – but there are five of them and one of her, and even without her wrists tied behind her back this wouldn’t go well.

She bides her time and waits until the first one is within biting range, his hand heavy on her hair, tipping her head back. She knows, logically, that she should wait until a better strategic moment, but he pushes his briefs down and pulls her head forward and she panics the way she never does in dreams anymore, lashing out because she can’t sit here and let this happen.

They subdue her the way she’d known they would, with meaty arms dragging her back down and immobilizing her, forcing her jaw open with sour fingers. At least she’s made two of them bleed, and she focuses on that thought and her own triumphant fury to keep the panic from bleeding in again when they press in closer around her and hold her down. _This is only a dream_ , she thinks, desperate and choking. _Only a dream._

She registers the clean pop of gunfire but can’t respond to it the way her body screams to do, trapped in place and providing far too stationary a target. It doesn’t matter; the man gripping her hair is the first to fall, and then the one on her right, freeing up her dominant hand if she can get it loose from the zip-cord.

She headbutts the nearest projection within reach, taking savage pleasure in the blood that sprays from his nose right before she whips her chair around and slams the metal leg into his skull. The others aren’t even paying attention to her now, too focused on the new threat of a gun, which means she can step back and drive her weight solidly into the guy behind her, stomping on his trachea viciously the second he hits the floor.

She jerks forward, off-balance, to take out the next, but there’s only one left and he has his hands up, a gun tilted up and away from her in one hand. Her rescuer. He’s not a member of her team, or anyone she recognizes, which automatically puts him on Arthur’s threat list, rescue or no.

Or, no. Wait. She knows those features, although she’s never seen them like this. She can recognize Eames’ generous mouth in the unfamiliar face, can see the humor in her eyes even when it’s subsumed by concern.

“All right?” Eames asks, and even though Arthur should have expected it, the voice still jars her, Eames’ accent and inflection wrapped in a man’s lower register. She’s wholly unattractive like this, to Arthur’s taste; her curves lost to the bulk of muscle put on by weightlifting and the planes of her face broadened into chiseled masculinity. Arthur doesn’t know if it’s the sting of being rescued by a man or the sting of being rescued by _Eames_ that cuts deepest.

“Fine,” Arthur bites off, twisting around so that Eames can cut her loose from the fucking chair. Eames’ hands on her wrists are gentle, even solicitous, but they’re a man’s hands attached to a stranger’s body and Arthur doesn’t relax until the cord snaps and she can pull clear.

She searches the bodies they’ve left strewn across the floor in a wide arc, but only one of the projections is carrying a sidearm. She curls her hands into fists and lets her nails bite into her palms, because they hadn’t needed guns to keep her restrained, had been able to hold her with nothing but brute force and muscle mass. Arthur should be better than that. She _is_ better than that.

She takes the Glock because it’s better than nothing, even though she hates the bulky weight of it and the difficult trigger. Eames watches her silently and falls in when she leaves, flanking her in a way that makes Arthur want to turn around and scream at her. She doesn’t, just keeps walking with the gun held ready at her side until they reach the others.

Their extractor, Cartwright, glances up briefly when they arrive before going back to decoding pages of encrypted information, all written out in the mark’s wide, sharp-angled handwriting. He looks mildly surprised to see them, but doesn’t comment beyond shuffling to the side to make room for them behind the dubious cover of an antique china cabinet. There’s a body at his feet that must be a recent kill; he stoops and checks the gun before passing it to Eames.

Arthur grits her teeth and doesn’t say anything, even though Eames already has her own gun in hand, and Arthur is the one on point here. She knows full well why Cartwright automatically gave Eames the gun, and it has nothing to do with their respective firearms training, and everything to do with Eames’ bulging biceps and what she has between her legs right now.

Eames gives her a funny look, apparently having caught the same thing, but she offers Arthur the gun and Arthur declines it with a sharp shake of her head. Let Eames have the fucking Colt; Arthur is keeping the Glock now out of spite.

“I’ve got it, let’s go,” Cartwright says, and they move to a more defensible position while the time runs down, until Arthur feels the weightless tug of consciousness pull her up and out.

Eames is looking at her when she wakes up, back in her own familiar body, and the veiled look on her face means she’s probably wondering what had happened in that room with the projections before she’d gotten there, if they’d done anything to Arthur that hadn’t been immediately visible. Arthur ignores her, going through the standard motions of clean-up, checking the mark’s sedation level and packing up their equipment.

Cartwright and Eames load the mark into the passenger seat of his SUV, and then Cartwright circles around to the driver’s side, pulling out of the garage serving as their base of operations to return the mark to his two-storey in the suburbs.

Arthur is aware of Eames in her periphery, but she keeps working. There’s no rush on this one, no need to clear out as quickly as possible and leave the country, but Arthur likes to be ready. They shouldn’t linger for long anyway. Arthur believes in staying on the move.

She works her way around the room until she has no choice but to return to Eames’ corner for the PASIV, and when she does, Eames is waiting.

“Arthur,” she says, stepping sideways to block Arthur’s path without actually touching or cornering her. And Arthur knows that move, knows that at any other time, Eames would be forcing the issue, catching Arthur’s wrist or finding some excuse to brush her knuckles against Arthur’s skin. The fact that she isn’t doing any of those things now screams delicate handling even more than her tone, and fuck her for whatever she thinks may have happened in there, Arthur doesn’t need delicate handling. Fuck her.

“Nothing happened,” she says, letting Eames off whatever hook she’s swinging on as brusquely as possible. She doesn’t say anything about it not being real, because they’ve both been killed in dreams before, both taken their turns killing, and they both know that while it may not be real, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel real even after the fact. Trauma lingers, even when it’s only in the mind. Maybe especially then.

She hates that they’re even talking about this. She hates that Eames has seen her stabbed, shot and disemboweled, but this is still an issue, still something to be addressed. Arthur was in the military. She’s always known that this is a possibility, that if she was ever captured or imprisoned, the rules for her wouldn’t be the same as they were for everyone else.

Most of all she hates Eames for being able to sidestep those rules entirely, to shed her skin and put on a new one when it suits her, to remove that vulnerability and then treat Arthur as though she’s any more fragile than Eames just because she can’t stop being what she is.

The military had always been a boy’s club. Arthur had known it at the time, had left because she’d thought that at least as a criminal, she’d be judged based solely on her abilities and reputation. She’d been wrong; if anything, the criminal world is even worse, and the others she works with don’t have anything approaching a unified code of morality. She’s never safe here, and she’s accepted that, learned how to be careful and watch her own back and become indispensible to everyone who might otherwise think of taking advantage. She’s the best in the world at her job, even if there are only a few people who recognize that among the sea of others whose eyes skim past her when looking for a point man.

Eames ought to have been in the same boat, but instead she shrugs into a male body, biceps rippling and stubble shadowing her face, and they forget who she really is the way they will never forget about Arthur.

“Nothing happened,” Arthur repeats, with steel in it this time because Eames still hasn’t moved.

“I can tell, by the way you’re so clearly unaffected,” Eames answers, and there’s something in the way she crosses her arms that reminds Arthur of the man Eames had been in the dream, a lingering sense of protectiveness and formidable threat. Eames doesn’t always shed her forgeries as easily as she puts them on.

It makes Arthur want to touch her, paradoxically, makes her want to strip all of that away and go deep enough that Eames won’t have anything left but herself. She’s still wound tight enough to follow the impulse, to step closer and let her voice drop into a purr that still ends up more of a snarl.

“Do you want me to show you?” she asks, and doesn’t wait for Eames to answer.

She doesn’t waste time; Cartwright will be gone for another half hour at least, but Arthur isn’t in the mood for soft touches and slow, drowning kisses. That isn’t what this is about.

Eames lets Arthur push her down onto the reclining lawn chair she’d been dreaming in, doesn’t offer any resistance even when Arthur’s fingers are quick and impatient on the hem of her skirt, dragging the material up and out of the way.

Eames has been working in the mark’s office as a temp, and she’d dressed for the part with all the enthusiasm of someone who’d never been tied down to a nine-to-five. The pencil skirt looks infuriatingly good on her, flattering her curves without losing the sleek edge Eames has always maintained. She’s wearing pink satin panties beneath, because Eames plays a role to the hilt and always has. Her stockings are silk and stop mid-thigh, held in place by black lace garters shot through with red ribbon, attached to an actual belt around her waist.

There’s a stiletto on the outside of her right thigh, held in place by the elastic garter, and the sight of it makes Arthur dig her fingernails into the indents left on Eames’ skin by the tight elastic bands around her thighs. Eames always does this to her, every time. As many times as they’ve done this, Arthur should be prepared for the way want kicks her in the stomach at the sight of Eames, sleek and deadly, but she never is.

Another time she would tease, draw it out by mouthing Eames through her panties and licking her until Arthur can’t tell whether the moisture soaking through the material is from her mouth or Eames’ cunt. She’s too impatient for that, too insistent on peeling away the layers of Eames’ disguises so that she can get her mouth on the truth of her, the sour taste and musk-scent of her.

She pulls the thong down Eames’ thighs, leaving the garter belt because it isn’t in her way, and pushes her tongue in between soft folds of skin, driving deeper into heat until she can taste the first slick traces of Eames’ arousal. She ignores Eames’ clit for now, because this is what she wants, the irrefutable proof of Eames’ womanhood and the familiarity of it in Arthur’s nostrils and on her tongue.

She presses her nose harder into Eames’ cunt, licking deeper, and hears Eames’ breath catch just before a fresh flood of sticky warmth coats Arthur’s mouth. She’s not especially gentle, taking more than giving, her tongue sweeping in broad, flat stripes over Eames’ folds and stabbing into the slick, hidden core of her.

Eames’ fingers clench on the arms of the chair, and Arthur’s hands slide further up her thighs to help brace her, the pad of her thumb sliding against the stiletto’s black leather sheath. She thinks about drawing it out, laying the blade flat against Eames’ stomach to feel the shallow pitch of her breathing, turning the knife over to press cool metal against Eames’ skin. She doesn’t do it, but her fingertips tease at the handle, brushing over the guard and the lace of Eames’ garter.

“Jesus,” Eames gasps, her hips lifting in spite of Arthur’s restraining hands, pelvis tilting so that she can ride Arthur’s tongue, more and more frantic. “Arthur, Arthur.”

Arthur drags her tongue up where Eames wants it and lets Eames get herself off on it, grinding down with choked-off whimpers until she finally bucks hard and Arthur licks her ruthlessly through it, until Eames gasps and twists away.

Arthur wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and stands up, feeling like she’s just proven something and not at all sure anymore what that is, or which one of them she’s proven it to. Eames stares at her with wide eyes for a few seconds while her body trembles through the aftershocks, and then she reaches out and captures Arthur’s wrist, careless handling forgotten in the wake of orgasm, and maybe that’s what Arthur had been after.

Eames pulls her down onto the recliner and Arthur straddles her, letting Eames fumble through Arthur’s tailored pants and thin cotton tanga. She wants to believe that the edge has been taken off, but she’s still filled with hot anger, the kind that crowds her emotions and doesn’t allow room for anything weaker to take hold.

She grabs Eames’ hand and pushes down onto her fingers, taking three because it burns and she wants that right now, wants the savage bite of dry friction and the scrape of Eames’ fingernails which are still too long from her stint undercover. She grinds down fiercely and doesn’t let go of Eames’ wrist, squeezing the bones together as she fucks herself on Eames’ fingers, rubbing her clit roughly against Eames’ thumb until she comes.

Orgasm breaks over her in white heat and she shakes through it, pushing herself down hard on Eames’ hand until the sensation has crested and she relaxes enough to let go. Eames doesn’t pull away immediately, although it can’t be comfortable for her, wrist twisted at an awkward angle and reddened with marks from Arthur’s fingers that will darken into bruises.

Arthur waits until she’s come down a little before opening her eyes, and when she does Eames is watching her, calm and undemanding. There’s nothing of the male forge in her now, softened and opened up for Arthur to lay bare, lay to waste.

“Enough?” Eames asks, and moves her hand just enough to make Arthur hiss, oversensitive. Arthur nods and forces her legs to hold her for long enough to stand and move to one side, so that she’s no longer straddling Eames’ hips and lace-shrouded thighs.

Eames lets her go, but Arthur thinks it’s probably only because she knows Arthur doesn’t plan on going far.

“How did you like the forge?” Eames asks suddenly, shifting a little on the recliner so that her skirt isn’t half-trapped beneath the swell of her ass.

“I hated it,” Arthur says, caught too soon after orgasm to be anything but honest.

Eames smiles faintly. “Yes, well, he’s not exactly to your taste, I know.” She doesn’t make any move closer, but Arthur suddenly feels trapped, penned in and naked beneath Eames’ too-observant eyes. Arthur stands up, confident this time that her legs will hold her, and puts her clothing back in order. Her panties are soaked, squelching unpleasantly when she shifts, but she’ll be able to shower back at the hotel. Her flight isn’t until the morning.

“I’ll see you in Paris? You’re still on for the Neustadt job?” She already knows the answer, of course, but it feels like a necessary step back into professional distance, even with Arthur’s cunt still throbbing and Eames’ thong tangled around the straps of her garter belt.

Eames doesn’t answer for a moment, and then she reaches out and catches Arthur’s fingers in hers. It’s an uncharacteristically gentle gesture, contact that would be easy for Arthur to free herself of, which may be why she freezes in surprise and doesn’t move.

“Stay with me tonight,” Eames asks, although it sounds anything like a question.

“Are you that hard up for company?” Arthur asks, eyebrows lifted. She hates that it feels like a defense mechanism, and that Eames’ expression doesn’t so much as flicker in response.

“Maybe I’d just rather you weren’t alone tonight,” Eames says, and Arthur gets that trapped feeling again, except that Eames is barely holding on at all, and Arthur knows she’d let go if Arthur pulled away. She waits it out, lets the panic settle and studies the simple sincerity in Eames’ eyes until finally she turns away.

She gives Eames the room key in her purse, because she can always get another from the front desk. “Four nineteen,” she says, holding it out like a peace offering, and Eames takes it with a slight smile that means she’s accepting the gesture.

If Arthur were a different sort of person, this would be when she’d spill all of the fear and frustration left over from the dream, telling Eames about the way she’d forgotten her training, her discipline, _everything_ in that one moment when she’d been faced with a situation that wasn’t even the worst she’d ever faced, that wasn’t even _real_.

If Eames were a different sort of person, Arthur might have had to tell her.

Instead she lets her hand drop and picks up her satchel, her purse, and the PASIV case lying next to Eames’ elbow. Eames tucks Arthur’s room key into her bra, still hidden away beneath her crisp blouse, and recovers the small pistol and thigh holster she’d taken off before going under. She pulls her panties back up, making a displeased face that Arthur can appreciate, and straps the holster in place on the thigh not currently sporting a stiletto before standing up and smoothing down her skirt.

Arthur doesn’t realize her eyes are lingering on the invisible bulge of the pistol butt until she looks up and catches Eames’ small, knowing smile. “I’ll see you at the hotel,” Eames tells her, slinging her jacket carelessly over one shoulder. She pauses just as she passes Arthur, searching her eyes for another brief moment before leaning in and brushing a light kiss across Arthur’s mouth. “Try not to be too long,” she requests, and leaves Arthur alone in the garage.

Arthur takes one long look around the empty space, trying not to feel as though the room is missing something with Eames no longer in it. Then she squares her shoulders, letting go of everything else, everything that doesn’t matter.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Arthur rolls up her sleeves and goes back to work.


End file.
